My glass of wine last night.

I met a couple of my favorite friends for a glass of wine last night (please do not hesitate to call me for wine so we can be “favorite” friends too!) and the topic of conversation was – “What’s next?” For one, her daughter is going off to college in a few weeks and her work and personal life are likely to change significantly. For another, she’s an author, owns a business and is ready for the next chapter (no pun intended).

This led me to thinking about what’s next for me. I decided that the only way to explore what’s next is to decide what’s important to me.

So, last night as I was laying in bed, I closed my eyes and thought – What is important to me?

One word immediately came to mind –

Love

It is the single most important word to me. I wear it on my finger. I wear it on my shirt sleeve. I experience it every time I see one of you and hug you. And I feel it every time I write a post. But how does it fit with what’s next? Why couldn’t some new app, or business idea or person have popped into my mind at that moment?!!!

Actually, it’s true – the most important thing to me is love. But for me – love isn’t a feeling. It’s the ability to help people. The ability to leave a piece of me with every interaction I make each and every day. It’s a combination of kindness, compassion, and equanimity (you can’t have a big ego to truly love!).

Love must fit with what’s next for me, but how? I’m constantly being asked what I’m doing with this blog. And there’s a lot of love here but how is that what’s next? This is obviously going to take me a bit to figure out.

What’s next for you? What’s important? What’s your passion? Maybe it’s a project, a job, a person or even just deciding that YOU are your passion for now. But, don’t you agree that amazing things happen when you start doing what you love – what you’re passionate about? And, when you do, isn’t as if your life slows down? Where rather than just waiting for the next special event – they all become special?

What’s next and what’s important sound like simple questions, but they’re not. Yet, they are likely the best questions to be asking ourselves – in order to ensure that the precious time we spend here is spent in situations that really fit for us. In other words, we have to spend more time doing (and being with) that which is important to us.

As you can tell from today’s post – I clearly have absolutely no answers and a billion questions (typical!) I guess this’ll be yet another exploratory process for me.

In the meantime, I can’t wait to hear about what’s next for you when you call for that glass of wine!